What had begun as one evening of refuge had lasted six days of circumspect cohabitation, both men learning the rhythms of the other's medical chaos. Ian's two other seizures were grand mal attacks, leaving him vulnerable and befuddled as Meir administered him cool, professional care. And for his part, Ian became Meir's guardian when the arrhythmia attacks hit, his life of vice remodeled into defending rather than assault.
On the fourth evening, Ian was woken out of a PTSD nightmare screaming, his body paralyzed in memory of shots and blood. Meir found him on the floor, trembling not from seizure but from sheer terror, and without hesitation descended to hold him through it.
"Tell me about them," Meir took a breath in the darkness, his own racing heartbeat smothering Ian's fear until they both fell into a poor imitation of calm.
Ian's voice broke as he described the slaughter in the warehouse, bodies of his men, months in hiding which followed. He told of Alexei, who had shown him how to pick locks; of Dmitri, who'd shown him how to kill with no trace; of Pavel, barely nineteen, who'd died in awe and still forming their names on his lips.
"They were bad guys," Ian explained, "but they were family. The first family I'd ever had that didn't hurt me."
Meir listened in silence, his fingers tracing Ian's scars down his back—each of them a story of survival, of childhood that had prepared him for a life of violence. When the words at last stopped, they remained there in the dark, two broken hearts thudding their irregular rhythms against the other's ribcage.
"I can't provide you normal," Meir said to Ian on the sixth morning, when Ian ought to have left but had not budged. "My heart's failing. The attacks are becoming more frequent, and Dr. Morrison suspects I may have perhaps a year. Two if I'm lucky."
"Good," said Ian, surprising them both with how firm he was. "I don't know how to be normal. But I do know how to take care of someone who counts."
The kiss that time was different—tender, instead of desperate, a promise instead of a goodbye. They were both broken, both standing before death's shadow, but fragmented as they were, together, they were more than the sum of their fragmented parts.
Ian never left. What he did do was learn about Meir's subtle cardiac warning signals—the gasp of breath before the seizure, the particular pallor that informed him his heart was laboring mightily to move blood through his body. Meir learned how to avoid Ian's seizures and PTSD rages, building a safe space where Ian could be honest and not fear being judged or rejected.
Their love was written in hospital notes and midnight vigils, in matched prescriptions and the fierce protection of two who'd found their missing piece in the most unlikely of circumstances. Ian used his underworld contacts to get Meir's medication when insurance expired on them, and Meir's medical acumen saved Ian's seizures from killing him in those compromised post-ictal periods.
The Bratva kept after Ian—there were glimpses of vigilance, the feeling of eyes that meant death shutting in. But for the first time in years, Ian was not fleeing. He was fighting to hold on to something worth dying for, and that was everything.